A WORD TAKEN AT PLEASURE
The excellent entertainment provided for them acted as a palliative to
Winnie's irritation and Bob Purnett's acute curiosity. There are no
'intervals' at music halls; they were switched too quickly from
diversion to diversion for much opportunity of talk to present itself;
and during the 'orchestral interlude,' half-way through the programme,
Bob left his place in search of refreshment. When they came out, the
subject of 'Mrs. Smith' had not advanced further between them.
Winnie refused her escort's offer of supper. By now she was tired out,
and she felt, though reluctant to own it, a childish instinct--since she
had to sleep in that desert of a house--to hide her head between the
sheets before midnight. This aim a swift motor-cab might just enable her
to accomplish.
Nor did the subject advance rapidly when the cab had started. Winnie lay
back against the cushions in a languid weariness, not equal to thinking
any more about her affairs that night. Bob sat opposite, not beside her,
for fear of his cigar smoke troubling her. She often closed her eyes;
then he would indulge himself in a cautious scrutiny of her face as the
street lamps lit it up in their rapid passage. She looked exceedingly
pretty, and would look prettier still--indeed, 'ripping'--with just a
little bit of make-up; for she was very pale, and life had already
drawn three or four delicate but unmistakable lines about eyes and
mouth. Bob allowed himself to consider her with more attention than he
had ever accorded to her before, and with a new sort of attention--on
his own account as a man, not merely as a respectful critic of Godfrey
Ledstone's taste. Because that remark of hers about not being called
'Mrs. Ledstone'--on pain of going mad--made a difference. Perhaps it
meant only a tiff--or, as he called it, a 'row.' Perhaps it meant more;
perhaps it was 'all off' between her and Godfrey--a final separation.
Whatever the remark meant, the state of affairs it indicated brought
Winnie more within her present companion's mental horizon. Tiffs and
separations were phenomena quite familiar to his experience. The truth
might be put higher; tiffs were the necessary concomitant, and
separations the inevitable end, of sentimental friendships. They came
more or less frequently, sooner or later; but they came. Growing
frequency of tiffs usually heralded separations. But sometimes the 'big
row' came all at once--a storm out of a blue sky, a sudden hurricane, in
which the consort ships lost touch of one another--or one went under,
while the other sailed away. All this was familiar ground to Bob
Purnett; he had often seen it, he had experienced it, he had joked and,
in his own vein, philosophized about it. The thing he had not
understood--though he had punctiliously feigned to accept--was the
sanctity and permanence of a tie which was, as everybody really must
know, neither sacred nor likely to be permanent. There he was out of his
depth; when tiffs and separations came on the scene, Bob felt his feet
touch bottom. And he had always been of opinion, in his heart, that,
whatever Winnie might believe, Godfrey Ledstone felt just as he did. Of
course Godfrey had had to pretend otherwise--well, the face opposite
Bob in the cab was worth a bit of pretending.
Winnie spoke briefly, two or three times, of the performance they had
seen, but said nothing more about herself. When they arrived at her
door, she told him to keep the cab.
"Because I've got nothing for you to eat, and I think you finished even
the whisky! Thanks for my evening, Mr. Purnett."
He walked through the little court up to the door with her. "And you
look as tired as a dog," he remarked--with a successful suppression of
'Mrs. Ledstone.' "What you want is a good sleep, and--and it'll all look
brighter in the morning. May I come and see you soon?"
"If I'm here, of course you may. But I haven't made up my mind. I may go
back to the country, to the Aikenheads, my cousins--where I met Godfrey,
you know."
He could not resist a question. "I say, is there trouble? You know how I
like you both. Has there been a row?"
She smiled at him. "Godfrey avoided any danger of that. I don't want to
talk about it, but you may as well know. Godfrey has gone away."
"Oh, but he'll come back, Mrs.----He'll come back, I mean, you know."
"Never. And I don't want him. Don't ask me any more--to-night, anyhow."
She gave him her hand with a friendly pressure. "Good-night."
"Good Lord! Well, I'm sorry. I say, you won't cut me now, will you?"
"I haven't so many friends that I need cut a good one. Now, if you drive
off at once, you'll be back in time to get some supper somewhere else."
She smiled again, and in a longing for comfort owned to him--and to
herself--her childish fears. "And I want to be snug in bed before the
spooks come out! I feel rather lonely. So, again, good-night." He had a
last vision of her small pale face as she slowly, reluctantly it seemed
to him, shut the door. A great rattle of bolts followed.
"Well, I'm left outside, anyhow," Bob reflected philosophically, as he
walked back to the cab. But his mind was occupied with the picture of
the proud forlorn woman, there alone in the empty house, very much alone
in the world too, and rather afraid of 'spooks.' All his natural
kindliness of heart was aroused in pity and sympathy for her. "I should
like to give her a really good time," he thought. In that aspect his
impulse was honestly unselfish. But the image of the pale delicate face
abode with him also. The two aspects of his impulse mingled; he saw no
reason why they should not, if it were really 'all off' between her and
Godfrey Ledstone. "I think she likes me well enough--I wonder if she
does!" He did not, to do him justice, ask an extravagant degree of
devotion in return for any 'good times' which he might find himself able
to offer. When it is so easy for two people with good tempers, sound
digestions, and plenty of ready cash to enjoy themselves, why spoil it
all by asking too much? Surely he and Winnie could enjoy themselves? The
idea stuck in his mind. Again, why--to him--should it not? His
scrupulous behaviour hitherto had been based on loyalty to Godfrey
Ledstone. It appeared that he was released from the obligation by his
friend's own act. "He can't say I didn't play the game, while the thing
lasted," thought Bob, with justifiable self-satisfaction.
The morrow of a catastrophe is perhaps harder to bear than the hour in
which it befalls us. The excitement of battling with fate is gone; but
the wounds smart and the bruises ache. Physically refreshed by sleep--a
sleep happily unbroken by assaults from without or ghostly visitants
within the house--Winnie braced her courage to meet the call on it. Her
task, not easy, yet was plain. She would not weep for her Godfrey
Ledstone; she would try not to think of him, nor to let her thoughts
stray back to the early days with him. She would and must think of the
other Godfrey, the one in Woburn Square. What woman would weep for such
a man as that--except his mother? On him she would fix her thoughts,
until she need think no more of either of them. She had to think of
herself--of what she had done and of what she was now to do. On the
first head she admitted a blunder, but no disgrace--a mistake not of
principle or theory, only a mistake in her man; with regard to the
second, she must make a decision.
Just before she had fairly settled down to this task, she had a visitor.
At half-past eleven--early hours for her to be out and about--Mrs.
Lenoir appeared.
"I was supping at the Carlton grill-room last night," she explained,
"with a couple of girls whom I'd taken to the play, and Bob Purnett came
in. He drove me back home, and--I don't know if he ought to have--but he
told me about some trouble here. So, as I'm an interfering old woman, I
came round to see if I could be of any use." Her manner to-day was less
stately and more cordial. Also she spoke with a certain frankness. "You
see, I know something about this sort of thing, my dear."
Winnie, of course, distinguished her 'sort of thing' very broadly from
'the sort of thing' to which Mrs. Lenoir must be assumed to refer, but
she made no secret of the state of the case or of her own attitude
towards it. "I accept it absolutely, but I'm bitterly hurt by the way it
was done."
"Oh, you can put it that way, my dear; but you're human like the rest
of us, and, of course, you hate having him taken away from you. Now
shall I try what I can do?"
"Not for the world! Not a word, nor a sign! It's my mistake, and I stand
by it. If he came back, it would never be the same thing. It was
beautiful; it would be shameful now."
Mrs. Lenoir smiled doubtfully; she had an imperfect understanding of the
mode of thought.
"Very well, that's settled. And, for my part, I think you're well rid of
him. A weak creature! Let him marry a Bloomsbury girl, and I hope she'll
keep him in fine order. But what are you going to do?"
"I don't quite know. Stephen and Tora would let me go back to Shaylor's
Patch for as long as I liked."
"Oh, Shaylor's Patch! To talk about it all, over and over again!"
A note of impatience in her friend's voice was amusingly evident to
Winnie. "You mean the less I talk about it, the better?" she asked,
smiling.
"Well, you haven't made exactly a success of it, have you?" The manner
was kinder than the words.
"And I didn't make exactly a success of my marriage either," Winnie
reflected, in a puzzled dolefulness. Because, if both orthodoxy and
unorthodoxy go wrong, what is a poor human woman to do? "Well, if I
mayn't go to Shaylor's Patch--at present, anyhow--I must stay here, Mrs.
Lenoir; that's all. The studio's in my name, because I could give better
security than Godfrey, and I can stay if I want to."
"Not very cheerful--and only that dirty old Irishwoman to do for you!"
"Oh, please don't abuse Mrs. O'Leary. She's my one consolation."
Mrs. Lenoir looked at her with something less than her usual
self-confidence. It was in a decidedly doubtful and tentative tone that
she put her question: "I couldn't persuade you to come and put up with
me--in both senses--for a bit?"
Winnie was surprised and touched; to her despairing mood any kindness
was a great kindness.
"That's really good of you," she said, pressing Mrs. Lenoir's hand for a
moment. "It's--merciful."
"I'm an old woman now, my dear, and most of my cronies are getting old
too. Still, some young folks look in now and then. We aren't at all gay;
but you'll be comfortable, and you can have a rest while you look about
you." There was a trace of the explanatory, of the reassuring, about
Mrs. Lenoir's sketch of her home life.
"What's good enough for you is good enough for me, you know," Winnie
remarked, with a smile.
"Oh, I'm not so sure! Oh, I'm not speaking of creature comforts and so
on. But you seem to me to expect so much of--of everybody."
Winnie took the hand she had pressed and held it. "And you?" she asked.
"Never mind me. You're young and attractive. Don't go on expecting too
much. They take what they can."
"They? Who?"
"Men," said Mrs. Lenoir. Then out of those distant, thoughtful, no
longer very bright eyes flashed for an instant the roguish twinkle for
which she had once been famous. "I've given them as good as I got,
though," said she. "And now--will you come?"
Winnie laughed. "Well, do you think I should prefer this empty tomb?"
she asked. Yes--empty and a tomb--apt words for what the studio now was.
"You weren't as nice as this at Shaylor's Patch--though you always said
things that made me think."
"They've all got their heads in the air at Shaylor's Patch--dear
creatures!"
"I shall enjoy staying with you. Is it really convenient?" Mrs. Lenoir
smiled. "Oh, but that's a silly question, because I know you meant it.
When may I come?"
"Not a moment later than this afternoon."
"Well, the truth is I didn't fancy sleeping here again. I expect I
should have gone to Shaylor's Patch."
Again Mrs. Lenoir smiled. "You're full of pluck, but you're scarcely
hard enough, my dear. If I'm a failure, Shaylor's Patch will do later,
won't it?"
"I shall disgrace you. I've nothing to wear. We were--I'm very poor, you
know."
"I'd give every pound at my bank and every rag off my back for one line
of your figure," said Mrs. Lenoir. "I was beautiful once, you know, my
dear." Her voice took on a note of generous recognition. "You're very
well--in the _petite_ style, Winnie." But by this she evidently meant
something different from her 'beautiful.' Well, it was matter of
history.
That afternoon, then, witnessed a remarkable change in Winnie's external
conditions. Instead of the desolate uncomfortable studio, charged with
memories too happy or too unhappy--there seemed nothing between the two,
and the extremes met--peopled, also, with 'spooks' potential if not
visualized, there was Mrs. Lenoir's luxurious flat in Knightsbridge,
replete, as the auctioneers say, with every modern convenience. The
difference was more than external. She was no longer a derelict--left
stranded at the studio or to drift back to Shaylor's Patch. No doubt it
might be said that she was received out of charity. Amply acknowledging
the boon, Winnie had yet the wit to perceive that the charity was
discriminating. Not for her had she been plain, not for her had she
been uninteresting! In a sense she had earned it. And in a sense, too,
she felt that she was in process of being avenged on Godfrey Ledstone
and on Woburn Square. A parallel might be traced here between her
feelings and Cyril Maxon's. They had made her count for nothing; she
felt that at Mrs. Lenoir's she might still count. The sorrow and the
hurt remained, but at least this was not finality. She had suffered
under a dread suspicion that in their different ways both Shaylor's
Patch and the solitary studio were. Here she had a renewed sense of
life, of a future possible. Yet here too, for the first time since
Godfrey left her, she lost her composure, and the tears came--quite
soon, within ten minutes after Mrs. Lenoir's greeting.
Mrs. Lenoir understood. "There, you're not so angry any more," she said.
"You're beginning to see that it must have happened--with that fellow!
Now Emily will make you comfortable, and put you to bed till
dinner-time. You needn't get up for that unless you like. There's only
the General coming; it's one of his nights."
Oh, the comfort of a good Emily--a maid not too young and not too old,
not too flighty and not too crabbed, light of hand, sympathetic,
entirely understanding that her lady has a right to be much more
comfortable than she has ever thought of being herself! In Maxon days
Winnie had possessed a maid. They seemed far off, and never had there
been one as good as Mrs. Lenoir's Emily. She had come into Mrs. Lenoir's
life about the same time as Mr. Lenoir had, but with an effect that an
impartial observer could not but recognize as not only more durable, but
also more essentially important--save that Lenoir had left the money
which made Emily possible. Mrs. Lenoir had paid for the money--in five
years' loyalty and service.
Winnie reposed between deliciously fine sheets--why, it was like
Devonshire Street, without Cyril Maxon!--and watched Emily dexterously
disposing her wardrobe. It was not ample. Some of the effects of the
Maxon days she had left behind in her hurried flight; most of the rest
had worn out. But there were relics of her gilded slavery. These Emily
tactfully admired; the humbler purchases of 'Mrs. Ledstone' she stowed
away without comment. Also without comment, but with extraordinary tact,
she laid out the inferior of Winnie's two evening dresses.
"There's nobody coming but the General, miss," said she.
"Now why does she call me 'miss'--and who's the General?" These two
problems rose in Winnie's mind, but did not demand instant solution.
They were not like the questions of the last few days; they were more
like Shaylor's Patch conundrums--interesting, but not urgent, willing to
wait for an idle hour or a rainy day, yielding place to a shining sun or
a romp with Alice. They yielded place now to Winnie's great physical
comfort, to her sense of rescue from the desolate studio, to her respite
from the feeling of finality and of failure. With immense surprise she
realized, as she lay there--in a quiet hour between Emily's deft and
charitable unpacking and Emily's return to get her into the inferior
frock (good enough for that unexplained General)--that she was what any
reasonably minded being would call happy. Though the great experiment
had failed, though Godfrey was at this moment in Woburn Square, though
Mabel Thurseley existed! "Oh, well, I was so tired," she apologized to
herself shamefacedly.
She got down into the small but pretty drawing-room in good time. Yet
Mrs. Lenoir was there before her, clad in a tea-gown, looking, as it
occurred to Winnie, rather like Mrs. Siddons--a cheerful Mrs. Siddons,
as, indeed, the great woman appears to have been in private life.
"I got my things off early, so as to leave you Emily," said the hostess.
She obviously did not consider that she had been getting anything on.
"What a dear she is!" Winnie came to the fire and stood there, a
slim-limbed creature, warming herself through garments easily penetrable
by the welcome blaze.
"Quite a find! The General sent her to me. Her husband was a
sergeant-major in his regiment--killed in South Africa."
The General again! But Winnie postponed that question. Her lips curved
in amusement. "She calls me 'miss.'"
"Better than that silly 'Mrs. Smith' you said to Bob Purnett. Only
unhappy women try to make epigrams. And for a woman to be unhappy is to
be a failure."
"Isn't that one--almost--Mrs. Lenoir?"
"Quite quick, my dear!" her hostess commented. "But if it is, it's old.
I told Emily you were a second cousin. I never know exactly what it
means, but in my experience it's quite useful. But please yourself,
Winnie. Who will you be?"
"Did Emily believe what you told her?"
The twinkle came again. "She's much too good a servant ever to raise
that question. What was your name?"
"My maiden name? Wilkins."
"I think names ending in 'kins' are very ugly," said Mrs. Lenoir. "But a
modification? What about Wilson? 'Winnie Wilson' is quite pretty."
"'Miss Winnie Wilson'? Isn't it rather--well, rather late in the day for
that? But, I don't want to be Ledstone--and it's rather unfair to call
myself Maxon still."
"Names," observed Mrs. Lenoir, "are really not worth troubling about, so
long as you don't hurt people's pride. I used to have a fetish-like
feeling about them--as if, I mean, you couldn't get rid of the one you
were born with, or, my dear, take one you had no particular right to.
But one night, long ago, somebody--I really forget who--brought an
Oxford don to supper. We got on the subject, and he told me that a great
philosopher--named Dobbs, if I remember rightly--defined a name as 'a
word taken at pleasure to serve for a mark.'" She looked across the
hearthrug, confidently expecting Winnie's approval. "I liked it, and it
stuck in my memory."
"It does make things simpler, Mrs. Lenoir."
"Mind you, I wouldn't take a great name I hadn't a right to. Courtenays
and Devereauxes in the chorus are very bad form. But I don't see why you
shouldn't be Wilson. And the 'Miss' avoids a lot of questions."
"All right. Miss Winnie Wilson be it! It sounds like a new toy. And now,
Mrs. Lenoir, for the other problem that Emily has raised. Who's the
General?"
Mrs. Lenoir liked her young friend, but possibly thought that she was
becoming a trifle impertinent. Not that she minded that; in her heart
she greeted it as a rebound from misery; in the young it often is.
"If you've any taste in men--which, up to now, you've given your friends
no reason to think--you'll like the General very much."
"Will he like me?"
"The only advantage of age is that I shan't mind if he does, Winnie."
Winnie darted towards her. "What a dear you've been to me to-day!"
"Hush, I think I hear the General's step."
The parlour-maid--not Emily, but a young woman, smart and a trifle
scornful--announced, "Sir Hugh Merriam, ma'am--and dinner's served."